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Comment by paxys | Hacker News Reader

Closed streets and expanded outdoor dining is the best thing to come to SF during the pandemic, especially since the weather is mild enough that they can be utilized year-round. I really hope the city decides to extend them beyond December.

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I almost felt like I was back in Europe. Slow streets or blocked streets allowing people and bars and restaurants to reclaim some of that space. It’s a treat. I hope it stays this way after covid19 and people realize how much car roads are killing the liveness in a city.

The first time I was in Europe on a road built for humans to walk on, I kept looking over my shoulder waiting for a car to make its way down the roads. I was pleasantly surprised.

I wish they'd close even a single street to car traffic in LA. A single one. Instead restaurants sprawl into the sidewalk and leave a little 2 food wide strip where you walk within spit fleck distance of dozens of maskless people eating and drinking and talking loud. I just look for a break in traffic to walk along the road or cross the street entirely.

Main street in downtown Culver City is closed -- for the single block it spans. It's something. It'd definitely be nice to see more of that elsewhere.

Same for a few blocks of downtown Santa Monica.

Also, a few blocks of Pine Avenue in Long Beach.

Build a pedestrian traffic layer over the service road tunnels, turn the 3rd floor into the main level. Vehicles are still needed for delivery and long distance, apply the engineering solution.

That sounds almost like a typical airport or mall.

For some reason, people don't want to be in a mall anymore. It's like how people don't want to be in a minivan anymore. Malls and minivans are practical. They just don't have the right image.

The typical mall or airport isn't built over a street. It's much more like building a subway for cars and banishing non-pedestrians to the underworld.

There are streets below airport concourses. The streets near the aircraft are used by baggage handling vehicles. The streets farther from the aircraft may be used by buses and taxis.

Large malls have lower space, often on only two sides, for delivery trucks. (the ground is commonly sloped so that customers enter on a different level from the deliveries)

Same in NYC. It's so great to see the almost competition by restaurants to outdo each other in designing outdoor spaces.

I really hope these changes stay permanently.

My only gripe is that we haven't figured out the European style where all the seats face the road. :)

That’s mostly in Paris. Don’t think I’ve seen that elsewhere.

Paris is the most dense I've seen personally but cafes in Vienna and Zurich at least still face the street at two person tables outside.

Netherlands and Belgium do it too.

Barcelona too.

Really? I’ve been there many times and have never noticed. Maybe it’s a newer trend?

It's not a new trend. People in latin countries like to look at what is happening on the street. https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo/paris-cafe-1950s.html

You have the right username to know Paris ;-) I can't remember from my own visits to Barcelona and Belgium how common it is. But photos of 1950s Paris are not evidence that it's common in other cities now.

I’ve lived all over the place in France and also in London and I’ve only seen this in Paris.

Italy.

NYC here. One of the quaintest things I have seen in my life : A small pub had three tables, two chairs each, on the pavement. One of it was "cordoned" off with velvet-red ropes and for full bottle service, the pub staff open the ropes with great aplomb! Roadside-Royalty.

Mild? Haha. My wife and I celebrated our anniversary back in late June by visiting the city and having dinner outdoors. Despite patio heaters, being on the leeward side of the building, and blankets(!!!) provided by the proprietor, we were absolutely freezing. I understand it's probably fine now, but give it a month or so.

Historically, it can well be worse in June than November, haha.

>The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.

-- (fictional) Mark Twain

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/and-never-the-twain-shall-...

Yeah, it's called June Gloom.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/June_Gloom

Yeah it's typical CA weather. The heat may not start until August but it hangs around until Nov/Dec. The thing is, we're just about to the end of the warm season. The rains may(it's a La Niña year, right?) start soon, and cold weather as well.

I wonder when chastising outsiders for extrapolating from summer that winter must be hellish overtook Herb Caen's "don't call it frisco" as the ultimate S.F. meme shibboleth?

Maybe you were dressed optimistically? SF has many problems. Weather is not one of them.

Having lived in San Francisco this year, I beg to differ. Next time I move I'm going to look hard for central air conditioning.

The problem with the bay area is that the majority of the buildings are old and lack proper insulation. The temp outside is often not too bad, but when your apartment turns into an oven or a drafty freezer for most of the year, the weather effectively sucks. Contrast with somewhere like Austin, which has horrible weather at times but with affordable, modern construction and cheaper CoL overall, you can live comfortably indoors year round.

I just paid my second $200+ electric bill this year, and that's for a 800 sq ft apartment with a single AC. That AC had to run for the last 3 months, nearly non-stop, just to keep the place in the low 70s. Sure, the place was renovated, and even has vinyl windows, but anything not relating to appearances was skipped in the remodel. No insulation. No leak sealing. Every time my neighbors light up a joint in the garage downstairs I get to smell it throughout my house.

Winter in SF can be pretty rough, but if they throw in some heat lamps or something, I may be okay with it post-pandemic.

Yes. I got to experience this on a trip back to LA (family health fun and games). I hope after all the misery is over that the increased open air dining and parklets stick around.

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